Reminders Of Him review: Predictable romance fails to stir any emotion

Reminders Of Him (12A, 114 mins)

Brian Viner

Rating:

Reminders Of Him, based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2022 novel, is a romantic weepie, albeit one that will have little impact on Kleenex stocks.

Kenna (Maika Monroe), fresh from a jail term for ‘vehicular manslaughter under the influence,’ has returned to the Wyoming town where her boyfriend Scotty (Rudy Pankow) died.

A few years earlier she took the wheel for the drive home after a blissful day of cold-water swimming and alfresco sex, up in the mountains.

Little though either of them knew it, she was pregnant. But by the time she had her daughter, Diem, she was handcuffed to a hospital bed and Scotty was a goner.

Now, his grieving parents (Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham) are raising the child with the help of Scotty’s hunky best friend Ledger (Tyriq Withers), who lives across the road.

Kenna is persona non grata, yet desperate to get to know Diem.

Predictably, she and Ledger start to fall for each other, opening up what we can only call a Kenna worms. Don’t worry, though… Hoover didn’t get where she is today without leaving everything clean and tidy.

That said, just because a film is based on a novel doesn’t mean the characterisations have to be paper-thin.

Ledger is basically just an angel with a six-pack, while Kenna is plainly soulful and sensitive because she keeps a journal in the form of letters to dead Scotty.

But neither of them is as one-dimensional as the score. If it were any cheesier I’d feel obliged to warn off the lactose intolerant.

Matthew Bond

Rating:

Reminders Of Him feels like something Nicholas Sparks – he of Message In A Bottle and The Notebook – might have written when he was still exploring the commercial potential of small-town romance.

In fact, it’s an all-female affair based on a novel by Colleen Hoover, adapted by Hoover and Lauren Levine and directed by Vanessa Caswill, known for Netflix rom-com Love At First Sight.

Here, Kenna (Maika Monroe) a troubled young woman newly released from prison, returns to the small Wyoming town where she was held responsible for the death of her popular fiance, Scotty, in a drunken car accident.

Why on earth has she come back, let alone sauntered into the bar owned by Scotty’s best friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers)?

She’s come to see her daughter, the little girl she’s never met, the baby who was taken away after she gave birth in prison.

Suffice it to say, Scotty’s parents, who have brought up the girl, are determined that will never happen.

This shouldn’t really work, especially with a plot that strains at the medical seams.

But it does, helped by the winning screen chemistry shared by Monroe and Withers and a strong supporting cast that will have you ticking off TV classics of the past – Gilmore Girls (Lauren Graham), The West Wing (Bradley Whitford) and Schitt’s Creek (Jennifer Robertson).